


One More For The Road

by perdiccas



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alcohol, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-03
Updated: 2009-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdiccas/pseuds/perdiccas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[College AU] In which Mohinder has a hangover, and Matt saves the day (twice).</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More For The Road

Mohinder had never been a big drinker. Growing up in Chennai, where social drinking was mostly frowned upon and getting drunk abhorred, the drinking culture at university had been a steep, and at times, disastrous learning curve. But pub crawls through the winding streets of Oxford, and invites, it seemed, to more wine and cheese parties than there were days of the week, had fortified him to the point where he felt confident he could hold his own. Confident, that is, until one week into his first semester as an exchange student at UCLA.

Drinking in LA was nothing like drinking in Oxford. Here shooters followed cheap beer, fruity umbrella drinks were passed around and flaming shots were downed to a chant of “Mohinder! Mohinder! Mohinder!” Mohinder’s stomach gurgled with the mix of sour, sweet and burning, remembering far too late that cautious rhyme he’d been taught by his housemate the first time he’d ended up curled over the toilet, heaving out his guts: ‘beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer.’ He was beginning to suspect that the adage could use a little tweaking, something to the effect of: ‘tequila, gin, beer, whisky and rum. Mohinder? You’re just plain dumb.’ He’d feel prouder about making it rhyme if he thought there was any chance he’d remember it, or anything else about this night, beside the blinding headache he was bound to have in the morning.

Suddenly feeling nostalgic for the Three Goat’s Heads, where he could nurse a pint for hours on end, or even, if the pub was quiet, catch a quick nap, leaning against the wood panelled walls, ensconced in a cosy corner, Mohinder stumbled outside to get some air. But even the _air_ in LA wasn’t right; Oxford was always chilly, and right now Mohinder needed that sobering rush of frost up his nose and the tingling blue numbness in his fingers that could snap him out of any stupor. LA was warm, even at this time of night and the lights were too bright. It made him want to lie down and curl up where he was, smack bang in the middle of the pavement---_sidewalk_, he corrected himself with a sigh.

A glance at his watch told him it was just gone eleven. In Oxford it would be closing time and he could stagger home with his pride intact. In LA, it meant the party had barely begun, and despite the nine am lecture they all shared, Mohinder knew everyone else would be out ‘til one, two, _three_ in the morning, dancing and drinking their way through each of the city’s hotspots.

The thought alone made Mohinder die a little inside.

He groped his way to a convenient wall, crouching down in the shadows of the alley. He was too far gone to really process the dumpster beside him or the disconcerting goo stagnating in the gutters around the heels of his shoes. All he knew was that the sticky bricks were cool on the back of his neck and if he closed his eyes, the world didn’t spin.

He wasn’t sure how long he crouched there, concentrating really very hard on not being sick; the insistent tap of a nightstick against his shoulder eventually shook the fog from his brain.

“Hey! Hey, kid, are you okay? C’mon, wakey wakey.”

Mohinder looked up warily and saw the figure of a police officer looming over him. He scrabbled up as quickly as he could, almost instantly regretting it as his head spun and he had to press both hands to the suspect grime on the wall to keep himself steady. He had the sudden suicidal urge to run as a thousand melodramatic scenarios swirled in his mind; he couldn’t face going back to Oxford, or worse yet Chennai, a common criminal.

He must have looked as green around the gills as he felt because instead of shackling his arms behind his back, Mohinder’s face pressed to the dumpster as he was brutally patted down, the officer gave him a kindly smile, saying, “Are you okay? Here, c’mon, I’m Matt,” and helped him sit on the bar’s back doorstep.

“Mohinder,” he mumbled in reply, clutching at his stomach as it gave a threatening snarl, protesting rather vocally to the up-down-up-down Mohinder had been subjecting it to.

“You’re not gonna be sick are you?” Matt asked, one arm firmly on Mohinder’s shoulder to keep him upright. “Only, these are new shoes…”

Mohinder stared at the shiny black toes of his shoes, polished so well that if his vision wasn’t quite so blurred, he felt sure he’d see his face reflected back in their surface.

“They’re very nice,” he said with giggle, wondering, on the sobering fringes of his mind, what he was doing in a darkened alley talking _shoes_ with one of LA’s finest.

Finest in more ways than one, he added to himself as he looked at Matt. His face wasn’t just nice: friendly, kind, approachable, it was _nice_: kissable lips, sweet rounded cheeks, a nose that Mohinder wanted to feel nestled against his as they kissed. And that didn’t even begin to take into account the rest of him, broad shoulders and chest, firm looking thighs that were doing all kinds of wonderful things to Mohinder’s insides where their legs pressed together on the narrow stoop. He was tall but soft around the edges, not some over muscled meathead.

The badge on his shirt pocket was almost as shiny-bright as his shoes and Mohinder wondered if it was new too. With all his mental filters about personal space and appropriate behaviour having crumbled under the sheer volume of alcohol he’d consumed that night, Mohinder reached out and ran his fingers along the points of the star.

Matt laughed, a little nervous, a little amused, and Mohinder decided that it was a delightful laugh, one that he’d be happy to listen to all the time. He dragged his fingers clumsily down the front of Matt’s shirt, aiming for sexy and achieving something a little closer to ridiculous, but he got that laugh again and then Matt’s hand was curling around his. His palm was broad and Mohinder felt so utterly safe with his hand in his that he forgot, for a moment, that he was in a dismal back alley with a man he barely knew.

“You’re not from around here are you, Mohinder?”

Mohinder shook his head, groaning a little at the beginnings of a stabbing pain behind his right eye. “No, I, uh, I’m just here for the semester.”

“You shouldn’t be out here, like this, all on your own. I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from but you can’t let the million dollar smiles everyone flashes here fool you. You could have been mugged or worse.”

“M’not alone,” Mohinder slurred. He was suddenly extraordinarily tried. Just speaking seemed like an insurmountable effort, but Matt was there, bright eyes taking a keen interest in him and he struggled against the pull of sleep rather than let Matt down. “Friends inside,” he mumbled around a yawn.

“Some friends, letting you wander around in this condition at three am.”

“No, no,” Mohinder insisted. He didn’t like to see Matt frown like that, he didn’t want to be the one that made him so upset. “S’not three am. It’s eleven.”

But that only hardened Matt’s face further. He peered into the street and, seeing it was mostly quiet, flung Mohinder’s arm over his shoulder and hauled him up. “You staying in the dorms?”

Mohinder nodded eagerly, desperate to have Matt smile at him again, but all he got was a terse, “C’mon, I’ll help you home.”

+

Mohinder woke, sprawled awkwardly on his bed, still fully dressed but for his shoes. His mouth felt abysmally dry and his head was pounding with the kind of pain that made him wish he had an ice pick to drive into his eye socket, just to lend the unending ache some variety. As he lay there, groaning piteously to himself, his stomach a horrendous swirling pit of nauseous hunger, the previous night came back to him in a cruel series of mortifying flashbacks.

Had he really drunk two rounds of something called a ‘Screaming Orgasm’? Had he really thought it a good idea to stumble, legless, into a fetid alley in this alien city? Had he---_oh god, oh please god no_\---really tried to jump the good Samaritan who’d helped him home, pouncing on him in a drunken, whirling flail of groping hands?

With the sinking, leaden clarity of sobriety, Mohinder vowed never to drink again.

Through eyelashes caked with sleep, a business card on his bedside table caught Mohinder’s eye. He heaved himself up to peer a little closer, not having the mental capacity to search the blankets, right then, for wherever his glasses had been lost in the night. The words ‘Matt Parkman, LAPD’ slowly came into focus as he squinted. And though Mohinder’s first wretched thought was that he must owe the man for dry cleaning---because sometime between the alley and here he’d lost that visceral need to hurl, and, unfortunately for Officer Parkman, neither Mohinder nor his immediate surroundings looked the worse for wear for it---he still found himself smiling, his chapped lips throbbing in a good way.

Having to face that particular long arm of the law was enough to spur Mohinder out of bed, no matter how close to death-by-youth’s-excesses he felt. He dragged himself to the shower with only a minimal twinge of guilt that the sun seemed high in the midday sky and he’d most certainly missed his morning lecture.

+

Mohinder sat at in a corner of his favourite coffee shop’s outdoor seating. The chairs and tables were laid out on the _sidewalk_, a loose chain cordon separating the patrons from passersby. With sunglasses to shield his eyes and an infusion of caffeine from a mug the size of a beer stein, Mohinder’s headache had dulled to a survivable throb at the base of his skull. The warm, California sun was lulling him into a stupor, and in his mind’s eye, he ran a million and one different meetings with Matt through his imagination, each and every one seeming to conclude with him and Matt cuddled together under Mohinder’s blankets, Matt’s shiny new shoes just peeking out from under the bed.

He was so immersed in his… _thoughts_, that he barely registered the kerfuffle until an irate woman was slamming both her hands down on his table and shrieking, “Where is it?” in his general direction.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, sliding down his sunglasses to peer at the woman over them. “I don’t know…”

“Don’t know?” she shouted, seemingly addressing the room at large. “Don’t give me that crap. I know you took it, so give it back!”

“Took what?” Mohinder hissed indignantly. He could feel the colour in his cheeks rising and his confusion turning to anger, though at the back of his mind, he guiltily wondered if this was some new, overly extreme measure to police those, like Mohinder, who habitually took more sugar packets than he’d ever need.

And as if summoned by Mohinder’s thinking of the word ‘police’, Matt was suddenly there, stepping over the chain railing as the woman launched into a diatribe that was far too loud and too offensive to be the soundtrack to what was turning out to be the most wonderful moment of Mohinder’s day. There was something about a missing wallet and Mohinder’s “shifty eyes”, a comment on the state of ‘things today’ (not good, if she was to be believed) and an obscenity or two thrown in for good measure.

Though in plain clothes, Matt still had that glimmering badge of his in his pocket and he flashed it with what Mohinder could only store away in his mind as panache. Behind his dark glasses, Mohinder rolled his eyes. He’d, unfortunately, heard worse before but imbeciles were ten to a penny---or perhaps, a dime a dozen---and at least this one had propelled Matt back into his life with extraordinarily good timing. So, instead of getting angry, he focused on the warm thrill of seeing Matt in action, shutting her down and shutting her up with a swift, “LAPD, ma’am. I’ll deal with this. Sir, you need to come with me.”

“What?” Mohinder blurted, choking on his coffee as Matt gripped him firmly by the elbow. This really wasn’t what he’d been expecting and wracked his already overstrained brain trying to recall if maybe he was forgetting something vital, something criminal from the night before to have Matt side with her not him.

He spluttered crossly as Matt hauled him up the street and into a secluded alley. Mohinder hoped that this wasn’t going to become a ‘thing’ for them, because, when sober, he wasn’t sure he could stand the stench that lingered around them like a third wheel.

“You’re nothing but trouble,” Matt said.

“What!?” Mohinder hissed back. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Oh, I know _that_,” Matt said, a little exasperated, a lot amused, that smile of his that had been seared into Mohinder’s memory seemingly twice as brilliant in the daylight. “But this is the second time I’ve had to save your ass, and it’s only my second week on the job!”

“I suppose I should make it up to you then.” Mohinder grinned back. “C’mon, let me make you a cup of coffee.”

+

Mohinder shrugged off his coat as Matt picked his way with exaggerated care over the messy floor. He would have felt at least a little shame for his less than stellar housekeeping skills, but he reasoned that Matt had seen both him and his dorm room in a much worse state the night before and hadn’t yet recoiled.

Matt stood in front of the white board that ran the length of one wall, staring quizzically at Mohinder’s chicken scratch scrawl, at the fragments of formulae and equations that Mohinder had scribbled down as he needed them or as aide memoirs for further research. There was no obvious organisation to it, although, like everything else in the disaster zone that was his room, he prided himself in being able to locate what he needed when he needed it without trouble. When confronted by the white board, even fellow biology majors got that glaze-eyed look that Matt was currently sporting.

Then, Matt spotted his business card under a magnet in the corner. He turned to Mohinder with a brilliant smile, and even as Mohinder felt himself blushing, internally cursing Matt’s honed observational skills, there was a warm feeling in his chest and he found himself grinning back.

“I’m on your ‘To Do’ list?” Matt asked cheekily, waggling his eyebrows as he walked towards him. “Under ‘Urgent’?”

“Well… I wanted to thank you for being so kind and tell you…” Mohinder babbled, heart beating quicker in his chest as Matt stood close enough from him to feel the heat from his broad chest against his front. When all the blood in his body made an abrupt, if not unexpected, detour to his groin, he trailed off, “…tell you… uh…”

As someone who usually prided himself on being articulate---_longwinded_ everyone else liked to tease---Mohinder found himself inexplicably tongue tied with Matt so near. His mouth felt dry and all at once, the only thing he could focus on was the masculine scent of Matt’s aftershave and that intent way he was staring down at him, warm brown eyes locked to Mohinder’s as if, right then, nothing in the world mattered but them.

“Uh…?” Matt prompted. “You wanted to tell me ‘uh...’?”

“Tell you how, uh…” Mohinder gulped, his mind racing.

He wanted to tell Matt how wonderful it had felt to have his arm around him, to have been pressed so snugly against Matt’s side, even if it had only been to make sure he didn’t fall down drunk. He wanted to tell him how his stomach had flipped, and his skin felt prickly warm all over, the second Matt appeared at the coffee shop to rescue him, and how he was at least 98% sure that that was because of _Matt_ and not some lingering after effects of his hangover. He wanted to tell Matt that he needed to be careful about whose white knight he played, because it was beginning to feel awfully like Mohinder was being swept off his feet.

But he couldn’t seem to form the words, or any words for that matter. All he managed was a senseless gurgle but Matt somehow understood. He leaned in close, the very tip of his nose just barely skimming over Mohinder’s cheek, his breath hot against Mohinder’s mouth. Mohinder leaned forward, completely weak at the knees, and clung desperately to Matt’s waist to keep from dissolving into a puddle of mush at Matt’s feet the second Matt’s soft lips pressed to his.

“That,” Mohinder breathed as they broke apart. “I wanted to tell you how very urgently I wanted to do that.”


End file.
